Absolute Biblical Truth Opposed by Roman Catholicism

The Lord Jesus Christ promised the Apostles, “when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.”[1]“All truth” signifies all revealed truth, which is recorded in the written Word. This promise was precise, “He will guide you into all truth,” not all truths (plural), but rather “all truth.” God’s truth is an indissoluble, balanced and harmonious whole.

In the Bible we have “all truth.”This is clearly understood by inference in the last scriptural command, “If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.”[2]

The writing of the Scriptures in an exclusive sense is the composition of the Holy Spirit, “holy men of God spake moved by the Holy Spirit.”[3] The Spirit is fully fitted for this work because He is “the Spirit of the truth.”He has perfect knowledge of the truth because He is God, one with the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit reveals nothing beyond the written Word, as Christ Jesus said, “He shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you.”[4] One can understand what Christ has taught through the Holy Spirit’s teaching in and through the Scriptures. Christ Jesus’ revelation that the Spirit of truth gave through His apostles is the final, ultimate definition of truth about God, man, and redemption-history. “The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”[5] The doctrines contained in the Scriptures are the absolute source of all the truth that the believer needs.

The Holy Spirit through the Scriptures reveals to Christ and His righteousness to believers. The Holy Spirit’s unique office is to lead us into all truth by convicting us of “sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.”[6] We are not kept in darkness, but are brought into the light so that we may believe.

Faith in Christ Jesus alone is the great, sure mark of the work of the Holy Spirit in your soul by which work you are made to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.”[7] To hinder this faith by maintaining that there is a source of confidence in Tradition that equals that of Scripture is to hinder souls from placing their foundation of trust on the Lord. What is more serious is that such a teaching speaks against the very person and work of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures. With heaviness of heart I now address the Catholic Church’s source of authority, remembering all the many years when I likewise instructed men, women and children in the doctrine that is to follow.

Tradition as an Equal Source of Certainty

The Catholic Church is forthright in stating the basis “of certainty” for her doctrine. She officially teaches,

“As a result the [Catholic] Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, ‘does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.’”[8]

The Superior Position of Tradition

The very nature of any authority is that it is self-governing. The life of faith must have a sovereign authority. If two authorities rule faith then it is destined for failure because one authority will dominate the other. The Vatican’s pretense of an equal “devotion and reverence” for both Scripture and Tradition is merely the ecclesiastical equivalent to the authority principle of a famous barnyard where it was declared that “all animals are equal”, but with the qualifier that “some animals are more equal than others.”[9] With the Vatican, Tradition is always the “committee chairman” with the deciding vote on matters of authority. That is how Rome lives out and continually enforces her rules.

For example, in the “Profession of Faith” of the Council of Trent, the formula for submission is given with these words,

“The apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and all other observances and constitutions of that same Church I most firmly admit and embrace. I likewise accept Holy Scripture according to that sense which our holy Mother Church has held and does hold, whose [office] it is to judge of the true meaning and interpretation of the sacred Scriptures; I shall never accept nor interpret it otherwise than in accordance with the unanimous consent of the Fathers.”[10]

The seat of authority, or the rule of faith, is firmly in the hands of the Roman hierarchy. The men who make up the hierarchy are “holy Mother Church.” They sit in judgment on the Scriptures. The end result is that the Catholic person ends up believing not the Almighty God and His written Word, but rather holy Mother Church and her Tradition. This way of thinking is drilled into the minds of “the Catholic faithful.”

An example of how Holy Mother governs is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “As a mother who teaches her children to speak and so to understand and communicate, the Church our Mother teaches us the language of faith in order to introduce us to the understanding and the life of faith.”[11]

However, on the most important topic of trusting Christ alone, Whom the Scriptures proclaim as the all-sufficient Savior, the same teaching authority requires that souls look to her maternal care rather than to fix their eyes on Christ Jesus alone. She officially declares,

“‘Believing’ is an ecclesial act. The Church’s faith precedes, engenders, supports and nourishes our faith. The Church is the mother of all believers. ‘No one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother.’”[12]

Ridicule Brought Against Scripture

The Vatican’s teaching in having people believe in her as “holy Mother Church” is as basic as was the vanity in the heart of Eve, leading her to accede to the wicked insinuations, “yea, hath God said?” and “ye shall be as gods.”[14]For this reason, the Scripture says, “for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”[15]

In equating Tradition to Scripture, the Catholic Church has in her prejudice held back the truth. The very element in which and by which the truth is known and enjoyed has thus become darkness, “if therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.”[16]Christ Jesus the Lord showed His wrath against the Pharisees for the same offense because it undermines the very authority and Person of God. He called them “ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?”[17] because their sin was like unto that of Satan who denied the all sufficiency of the Lord’s Word. The severity of the Lord’s condemnation ought not to be a surprise because the system of the Pharisees was the corrupter of the Scripture and the base enemy of sound doctrine. Christ intended to strike dread into His people so that that they might guard against a similar deception.

To deal with this debasement in any way but with the utmost seriousness would be to fail the Lord Jesus Christ and betray the souls of men. Making tradition a part of the rule of faith subverts the entire authority of Scripture and is a formal refusal of the Lordship of Christ Jesus.[18]

The Claimed Lordship of the Pope

Within Catholicism, the basis for truth, while absolute, is not the unqualified authority of God in Scripture; rather it is the authority of a man, the Pope of Rome. The ultimate authority lies in the decisions and decrees of the reigning Pope. This is seen in documentation from official Catholic sources, as Vatican canon law declares,

“The Supreme Pontiff, in virtue of his office, possesses infallible teaching authority when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful…he proclaims with a definitive act that a doctrine of faith or morals is to be held as such.”[19]

The mandated response of “the Christian faithful” to this claimed infallible teaching authority is spelled out in Canon 752, “A religious respect of intellect and will, even if not the assent of faith, is to be paid to the teaching which the Supreme Pontiff.…” Any appeal or recourse against the totalitarian imposition of a claimed infallibility is silenced by the decree of Canon 333 Sec. 3, “There is neither appeal nor recourse against a decision or decree of the Roman Pontiff.”

According to the Scripture, however, infallibility is an attribute of God and not that of any man or group of men. Eternity, omniscience, and infallibility are among God’s incommunicable natural attributes, properties of His Being that cannot be passed or delegated to creatures. There are some things God declares He cannot do, He cannot lie, nor can He create another infallible one.[20] The papal claim to “infallible teaching authority” is essentially a claim to divinity. The Vatican’s doctrine flaunts the claim that the Pope is “The Holy Father”[21]. Nothing more strikingly displays the arrogance of the Papacy than this appalling claim to infallibility. The Pope, in setting himself up as supreme, has de facto denied the absolute authority of God!

Alleged Infallibility and the Facts of History

That a human power should claim infallibility to be “as God” defies imagination. In aping God’s attribute of infallibility, the system of Rome not only mocks the Godhead and His truth, but it also denies the facts of history. Pope Honorious (625-638) was condemned as a heretic by the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680-681 A.D.). He was also condemned as a heretic by Pope Leo II, as well as by every other Pope until the eleventh century. So there were “infallible” Popes condemning another “infallible” Pope as a heretic. The Catholic historian, Archbishop Bernard Hasler, writes, “but [Pope] John XXII did not want to hear about his own infallibility; he viewed it an improper restriction of his rights as a sovereign, and in the bull Qui quorundam (1324) condemned the Franciscan doctrine of papal infallibility as the work of the devil.”[22]The Vatican’s declaration of claimed infallibility is reprimanded by the Lord’s commandment, “I am the LORD thy God … Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”[23] The same alleged infallibility is seen, although in different terminology, in Rome’s declaration that her tradition is divinely inspired.

The Claim for Tradition as “Divinely Inspired”

To understand the Vatican’s traditions, one must appreciate her mindset in the bold assertion that her doctrines are inspired by the Holy Spirit. Thus she says, “Following the divinely inspired teaching of our holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church (for we know that this tradition comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells in her)…”[24]

Further, the Vatican professes itself not to be a “religion of the book”, not a religion of “a written and mute word” but rather to have the “Word” of God, incarnate and living. Thus she officially states, “Still, the Christian faith is not a ‘religion of the book’. Christianity is the religion of the ‘Word’ of God, ‘not a written and mute word, but incarnate and living.’”[25] Only men devoid of the Holy Spirit could have penned and published such a distorted view of Holy Scripture.

The Scripture, God’s written Word, shows the brightness of the truth, holiness, majesty and authority of God, given to it by its Author, the Holy Spirit. Sacred Scripture has the stamp God’s excellence upon it, distinguishing it from all other writings. It is quick and active, seizing the conscience of the sinner, in convicting him to the heart. It comforts the believer and binds up the wounds of the soul, “for the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword.”[26]

The Vatican’s claim to “divinely inspired teaching of our holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church” is an unjustified assertion of divine sanction for her tradition. Rome attempts to place herself on the throne of God declaring her tradition to be on a par with Scripture inspired by God. The Church of Rome does not stop there. In another document her assertions go so far as to contend that the very fullness of grace and truth belongs to the Catholic Church. From her official documented, Dominus Iesus, the Vatican’s exact words are,

“Therefore, the fullness of Christ’s salvific mystery belongs also to the [Roman Catholic] Church, inseparably united to her Lord.” And, “The Lord Jesus, the only Saviour, did not only establish a simple community of disciples, but constituted the Church as a salvific mystery: he himself is in the Church…” And, “the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church.”[27]

The Scripture speaks of only One to whom the very fullness of grace and truth has been entrusted, His name is the Lord Jesus Christ.[28] The papal arrogance tallies well with what the Scripture predicted for such claims, “I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.”[29]

If Christ Himself were identified with the Church of Rome, He would have been responsible for all the torture, murder, heresy, and intrigue of the Inquisition from the iniquitous Pope Innocent III in 1203 until its final dissolution in Spain and Portugal in 1808. No, the Christ of Scripture is separated from all such iniquity. He is the source and means of grace and truth.[30]

Far from being identified with her, He exposes her as “The woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.’”[31]He as the Lord of history reveals the rotten fruit that comes from her so-called “divinely inspired” tradition.

Where “Divinely Inspired” Tradition Leads

Having examined the claim for a “tradition [that] comes from the Holy Spirit”, it is necessary to evaluate just what that tradition entails. The Church of Rome states,

“Following the divinely inspired teaching of our holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church (for we know that this tradition comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells in her) we rightly define with full certainty and correctness that, like the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, venerable and holy images of our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ, our inviolate Lady, the holy Mother of God, and the venerated angels, all the saints and the just, whether painted or made of mosaic or another suitable material, are to be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, walls and panels, in houses and on streets.”[32]

This is idolatry – plain, simple, and condemned by the Lord God. The Scripture makes clear that God hates idolatry and forbids a representation in art of what is divine (Exodus. 20:4-6). Making images to represent God corrupts those who use them (Deuteronomy 4:13, 15-16). Images teach lies about God (Habakkuk. 2:18-20). God cannot be represented in art and all who practice idolatry are commanded to repent (Acts 17:29-30). The Holy Spirit orders in the New Testament as He did the Old, “little children, keep yourselves from idols.”[33]

The traditions of Catholicism bring into the worship of God unholy water mixed with oil and salt, the smells of charcoal and incense, the lives of frustrated celibate men and women, and worst of all, it brings in the idolatry that God hates. With such “images of our Lord and God”, Rome commands the exhibition of “the venerated angels, all the saints” and saints’ bones, which are venerated as Holy Relics. Such teaching and behavior bring ridicule upon the Holy Spirit, which the Church of Rome claims as the source of her tradition. She mocks God when she pretends that these traditions came from the Holy Spirit.

Rome Boasts Her Sacred Tradition Exceeds God’s Word

To maintain her pomp, ceremonies, and sacraments, Rome officially states that her Tradition is sacred,

“Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine wellspring, come together in some fashion to form one thing and move towards the same goal.”[34]

Rome claims not only that Sacred Tradition forms “one thing” with God’s Written Word but also that her Holy Tradition transmits God’s Word. She declares:

“Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit. And [Holy][35]Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound, and spread it abroad by their preaching.”[36]

Such teaching dishonors God’s Holy Name and is a profanity against His Holy Word.

The Scripture teaches that the Written Word of God cannot be commingled with anything else. The Lord Jesus Christ’s Himself said, “the scripture cannot be broken.”[37]“Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?”[38]

The Catholic assertion that “Holy Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God” is literally a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit communicates His Word to believers. This is His design and purpose in transmitting His Word to His people. It is not the Holy Spirit’s endeavor to transmit an unholy Tradition that upholds idolatry, superstition, and necromancy.

“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”[39] It is true faith that the Spirit of God seals in the hearts of believers, as He alone is the Spirit of truth. By His own divine light, efficacy, and power, the testimony of the Holy Spirit is given to all believers in the Written Word. The Holy Spirit’s communication of His own light and authority to the Scripture is the evidence of its origin.

The Holy Spirit brings His Word to believers, not the Catholic tradition.

Tradition as It is Used in the Catholic Storehouse

The Vatican’s declaration that “Holy Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God” not only denigrates the divine Person of the Holy Spirit, but it also focuses the mind on Tradition rather than on the divine Person of the Holy Spirit to open the Word to him or her. That this is the very desire of Rome is emphasized by her by means of the use of italics in the beginning of Paragraph 113 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Read the Scripture within the ‘living Tradition of the whole Church.’” Then Rome goes so far as to reprimand those who stray because she states there is “…the tendency to read and to interpret Sacred Scripture outside the Tradition and Magisterium of the Church.”[40] Thus the Church of Rome in her “Tradition and Magisterium” leaves room for paying divine honors to the supposed relics of martyrs, erecting altars, burning incense, consecrating images and temples, and making prayers and praises to the honor of saints departed. This demonic worship is paganism revived.

Believers being convicted by the Holy Spirit, however, receive, embrace, believe, and submit to the Scriptures because of the authority of God Who gave them to us. The system of Rome maligns the Holy Spirit in claiming that “Holy Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God.” This is actually a handy trick employed by dictators, the “law” being whatever the dictator says it is today. Since the law is not necessarily written down, it can be contradicted with impunity whenever the dictator chooses. “Tradition”, used this way, is a very handy tool in the Catholic storeroom. In so using it, she negates the very means by which a person is saved from his or her sin. The Vatican’s teaching is literally soul damning, in the words of Lord, “woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.”[41]

The Apostle Paul urges the believer to look to the “…demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”[42] Just as a fresh supply of manna was given each day to the Israelites in the desert, so the Spirit of God ever breaks anew the Scriptures to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Therefore, it is incumbent on all who love Catholics to faithfully direct them away from the words of men, and toward the Scripture wherein they may find One Who said, “he that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.”[43]

The Claim that Apostolic Succession Upholds Tradition

“In order that the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church the apostles left bishops as their successors. They gave them ‘their own position of teaching authority.’ Indeed, ‘the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time.’ This living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit, is called Tradition, since it is distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it.”[44]

Nowhere in Scripture is there reference to “a continuous line of succession” (which amounts to “apostolic succession”). In the New Testament the Apostles did not appoint other apostles but rather elders[45] and deacons. Nonetheless Rome attempts to defend her position in the name of acontinuous line of successionfrom the Apostles.[46] If one wants to use the concept of “apostolic succession”, the true successors of the Apostles are the saints of the household of God who “are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.”[47]If that doctrinal foundation is destroyed, one does not have apostolic faith; rather he has apostasy. “Apostolic succession” without apostolic doctrine is a fraud. It is only Scriptural doctrine that makes one wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus.

If one actually investigates “succession” in terms of Catholicism, the evidence of a sequence from pagan Rome is what appears as obvious. This is documented by one of Vatican’s famous scholars, Cardinal John Henry Newman, as he wrote of the pagan origin of many Catholic practices,

“We are told in various ways by Eusebius that Constantine, in order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred into it the outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in their own….The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holidays and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields; sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure…. images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison, are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church.”[48]

Such a succession in tradition of incense, candles, votive offerings, holy water, processions, blessed oils, palms, ashes and forbidding people to marry and the ordering of abstinence from certain foods is, in the words of the Apostle “…a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.”[49]The same Apostle spoke of the deterioration to follow; such in fact is the succession of the Vatican. “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.”[50]

It is Christ Jesus the Lord who speaks in Scriptures. In it His Holy Spirit tells us who He is, and what we are. He tells us that He has come to save us from our sins, and for that purpose the Father sent Him into the world. In order to bring that work to completion in individual men, the Holy Spirit applies the truth of Scripture to the individual believer. He will lead His people out the religion of “baptized paganism” embodied in the Church of Rome. For all imaginative habits of tradition, her teachings, worship, and emotional pseudo-spiritual experiences that arise from outside the Scripture, are no more than vagrant deceits and self-willed deceptions. “Beware,” says the Scripture, “lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”[51]

Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit

The frank examination of the Catholic Church’s doctrine of authority made here leads to the conclusion that her authority is not simply without true biblical foundation, but it also is an attempt to completely usurp the divine authority of the Lord God in His Written Word. “Holy Mother Church” in biblical terms is neither holy nor strictly speaking a church. She is rather the clear successor to the Imperial Roman Empire, which is embodied in her arrogance in law, traditions and pagan customs. (This we will more fully describe and document in chapter twelve.)

Attributing her Tradition to the inspiration and leading of the Holy Spirit, and presumptuously assuming such preposterous claims as papal infallibility, is in the strict sense of the term a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. That is why there can never be any negotiation, compromise, or alliance between the Vatican and Bride of Christ. The “Temple curia” of the Pharisees, in the Lord’s time, identified themselves with all that was good, upright, and holy. There was no question in their minds but that God worked wholly in, by, and through their teachings and administrations. Christ Jesus, however, proved them to be “like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”[52] In a similar manner, the proud privileges and claims of the Roman system to be the very mouthpiece of God are shown by the Word of the Lord to be “seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.”[53]

Even the testimony of history shows that this system has been an instrument of persecution of true Biblical faith and a tool of assimilation whereby pagan shrines and artifacts have become grottoes of Mary and images of her person. The Roman religion and her form of godliness has become a cloak to cover her paganism. Her basis of all of this is the plea that her Tradition is to be equally honored as the Lord’s own Written Word to the destruction of “the faithful”, “Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.”[54]

The defamation of Mary by Roman Catholic Tradition has enabled Rome to construct a worldwide empire where she enforces her will over 814,779 women who are her nuns, 57,813 men whom she calls religious brothers, and 404,626 men whom she calls her priests.[55]

The Holy Spirit, foreseeing all these things, as the guide and Comforter of the true Church, has graciously provided a divine answer for the dangerous, ubiquitous, and deceiving system of Rome and her fabricated authority base. God Himself, Who began the writing of the Word with His own finger, has in these last days spoken to us “by his Son.”[56] This Son authenticated the writings of the Old Testament and, as the Alpha and Omega, having all Authority in heaven and on earth, authorized the New Testament and commanded its writing in His words to the Apostle John, “what thou seest, write in a book.”[57]The Lord Jesus Christ’s mind and counsel come unto the believers in writing. The Scripture is given as a merciful and steadfast relief against all that is confusion, darkness, and uncertainty, including the Catholic Church. In our precious Lord we truly praise God for the treasure and confidence that we have in the Scripture, which is truth, and that “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousnessthat the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”[58]

[45] The terms overseer and elder/pastor are used interchangeably (Acts 20:17, 28; I Peter 5:1-4).

[46] The Pharisees of Jesus’ time had their basic allegiance to a “living Torah”. For them Scripture did not mean a finished revelation. Their real loyalty was to a living knowledge they claimed came through Tradition from Moses. In precisely the same way, the system of Rome claims a “living transmission” called Tradition by means of apostolic succession.